Original Chalk Drawings of Lost Artwork by Benjamin WestThe original chalk drawings of two lost paintings by American portrait and history painter, Benjamin West, surface at Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions.

The current watercolour is directly comparable with Rowlandson's A Sportsman, possibly Rowlandson, with hounds setting out from Hengar House, Cornwall [cf. John Hayes, Rowlandson Watercolours and Drawings, 1972, repr. p. 19, fig. 6], and stylistically would appear to have been executed during the same stay at Hengar House.

Hengar House, Cornwall, was the country estate of Matthew Michell (1751-1817), who apart from having 'an apparently insatiable appetite for Rowlandson's drawings, was [also] one of the artist's closest friends from the 1790s, until 1819, when he died', [John Hayes, Rowlandson Watercolours and Drawings, 1972, p. 7].

The subject of this finely detailed drawing was known to Hollarís biographer, the late Richard T. Godfrey, who identifies it as The Battle of White Mountain. The battle took place outside Prague in 1620, and marked the end of the Bohemian period of the Thirty Years' War, and ultimately influenced the Czech lands for the following 300 years. Hollar would have been aged only 14 or 15 when the event took place, and the drawing may show an early stage in the development of Hollars' microcosmic approach to draughtsmanship.

Arthur Hind notes in 'A Catalogue of Rembrandt's etchings', that the current example of 'A Collection of Two Hundred Original Etchings' must have printed by Lewis between 1819-22, as it was during these years that he was located at 21 Finch Lane, Cornhill.